1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to the display of messages at a communication device, and in particular to the assessment of the relative importance of a message and its prominent display on the communication device.
2. Description of the Related Art
Communication devices, such as smart phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), personal computers, and the like, are commonly used to receive, transmit, store, and display messages such as electronic mail (e-mail), short message service (SMS) messages, instant messages (IM), and even non-text messages such as voicemail messages. Such communication devices may be provided with a messaging application executable at the device to manage such messages, allowing the user to receive messages; read (or otherwise peruse or hear the contents) of the messages; and respond to, save, delete, and/or file the message in a folder on the communication device, as desired. The messaging application typically provides a user interface that displays the messages stored at the communication device, or at least a subset of those messages, to the user in chronological or reverse chronological order. The standard view of such messages is a listing of header information taken from the messages in a single message folder. In a user interface environment featuring windows or panes for displaying data, the listing may be displayed in a single pane; if the entire listing cannot be displayed in the pane, then the excess listings may scroll off the boundary of the pane, and the pane may be provided with scroll bars or controls to allow the user to scroll or page up or down the listing. In a communication device with limited display space, most of the display space may be taken up with a viewport displaying a portion of the listing, and the viewport may be scrollable to allow the user to scroll or page up or down through the listing. Thus, if the messaging application is configured to display the contents of the “inbox” of the communication device, which typically comprises all received messages, then if there is a large number of messages in the inbox the user will only be able to see a small subset of the listing of inbox messages at any given time; in order to see other messages in the listing, the user is required to scroll through the listing in the pane or viewport.
Messages that are sent to a recipient, such as the user of the communication device, may be marked by the sender with an “importance” or priority level, which is indicative of the sender's estimation of the importance of the message that is sent. Such importance levels are not mandatory, and may be ignored by a messaging application handling the received message. If the messaging application is configured to process the importance level of a received message, the user interface of the messaging application may be configurable to display messages in order of importance; the most important messages, with the highest importance level, would be displayed first (i.e., at the beginning of the listing), then the less important messages would follow. “Important” messages may also be displayed in the listing with an icon, such as an exclamation mark, flag, or arrow, as a visual indicator of its importance. Thus, such important messages can be easily identified from a glance at the message listing; the important messages are marked with a visual icon and/or displayed at the beginning of the listing in the pane or viewport. However, if the user habitually receives a large volume of messages at the communication device, these important messages will not be easily noticed by the user. If the messages are displayed in chronological or reverse chronological order, then the important messages will be forced further down the listing as newer messages are received, such that it is no longer displayed in the viewport or pane. In that case, the user will not be aware of the receipt of an important message without scrolling through the message listing until the message listing is viewable in the viewport or pane. Even if the messages are displayed in order of importance, if the user receives a large number of messages which were designated as important by their senders then earlier-received important messages will be forced further down the listing, and similarly will no longer be immediately viewable in the viewport or pane without scrolling through the listing. Thus, the user may miss reading and responding to an important message. Furthermore, even once the user has determined that the message is no longer important, the message will remain in the inbox listing, and its icon may visually distract the user from reading another important message. While this distraction could be removed by deleting or moving the message from the inbox, the user may not wish to delete or move the message.
It is therefore desirable to provide a system and method for displaying important messages on a communication device in a manner that increases the prominence of important messages in the message listing, and that reduces the likelihood that the user will miss reading a message determined to be important or of high priority.